Stranger Than Fiction Vol. VII

Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month

early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and today's podcast features three stories that demonstrate that. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called The Way, and it's about the creepy backstory to a very famous 90s song.
The second story you'll hear is called High Stakes, what seems like a harmless dare turns out to have disastrous consequences. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Baltic Fleet, and it's about one of the biggest naval blunders of all time.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please invite the follow button out for a very casual night out together, and when you're about halfway through dinner, begin aggressively hard-selling them your

multi-level marketing scheme. Okay, let's get into our first story called The Way.
The End dress is stitched from the clothes of children she snatches when she skitters down from her lair deep in the mountains. She wraps them in her red yarn like little flies.
In the clutches of her palm, the children watch their homes fade in the distance. The earth blurs beneath her spindled legs as she rushes over hills and fields, the moon and stars the only witnesses to their vanishing.
To her lab they'll go, wrapped in red, waiting to be found, waiting to be woven whole. Explore more Deep South mythos and encounter creatures like Molly in South of Midnight.
Available April 8th, 2025 on Xbox Series X and S, Game Pass Ultimate and PC and Steam. Pre-install on Game Pass or pre-order now.
Terms apply. See xbox.com slash subscription terms.
Rated M for Mature. If you're a parent or share a fridge with someone, Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier.
Because with Family Carts, you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want. Since between the two of you, odds are you'll both remember everything you need.
And this way, you'll never have to eat milkless cereal again. So minimize the stress of the weekly shop with family carts.
Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as

fast as 30 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.ila Howard turned up the radio in the living room of her small home in Texas, and then she took a seat next to her husband, Raymond, on the couch.
This was a song that both of them loved, and in the past, Lila knew her husband would have swooped her up and begun dancing with her right away. But Raymond was now 88 years old, he was also recovering from brain surgery, and they both were planning to go to bed in the next few minutes because they had a big day the next day.
They were going to go to the Pioneer Day Music Festival, which is an annual fiddling festival located about 15 miles away from where Lila and Raymond lived in the town of Salado, Texas. Lila and Raymond attended this festival basically every year, and so even though Raymond right now was a bit fragile from his surgery and his advanced age, you know, the couple had not even considered missing it.
Lila's son Hal had tried to persuade Lila to let him, Hal, drive the couple to the music festival, but Leela said no because Leela and Raymond were both fiercely independent and wanted to be in control of their lives, which included driving to and from this festival. Also, Leela had talked about maybe going someplace else after the festival ended with Raymond, kind of spontaneously just driving out and doing something.

And so she really wanted to have her own car in case she did want to do that.

And so after a few minutes,

Lila and Raymond's favorite song came to an end

and the DJ hopped back on the radio

and began talking about the weather and the traffic.

And at that point, Raymond and Lila,

they stood up from the couch,

they took each other's hands

and they walked upstairs to go to bed. The next morning, so June 29th, Lila and Raymond walked out the front door of their house, and they walked down to their driveway where their Oldsmobile car was parked.
Lila helped Raymond get into the passenger seat, and then Lila took her spot in the driver's seat. And then a few moments later after they were all buckled in and situated, Leela fired up the car, backed out the driveway, and began driving.
That evening, Leela's son Hal decided to swing by Lila and Raymond's house

to check in on them and see how the festival went.

And so at about 5 p.m., Hal got to their house,

and right away when he pulled up, he noticed that Lila and Raymond's car,

the Oldsmobile, was not in the driveway.

And so Hal thought that was pretty odd,

because by now, they should have been back from the festival.

In years past, they would always get home by about 3 p.m. at the absolute latest, because they didn't like staying out late.
And so it just seemed odd that they were not back by now. But at the same time, Hal knew that Leela had been thinking about maybe going out and doing something spontaneous after the event was over.
And so he thought, you know, maybe his mom and Raymond were out driving around somewhere and they'd be back later. But just for good measure, Hal did park the car and he walked up to the front door of the house and he did knock.
But when there was no answer, he thought, you know what, I'll just go home and come back in a few hours and check in on them at that point. And so a few hours later at 8 p.m., Hal drove back to Lila and Raymond's house, and when he got there, he saw their car was still not back yet.
And so now Hal's starting to feel pretty worried, and so he parked the car, he walked up to the front door, he did knock, there was no answer, and so he pulled out his set of keys, he opened up the door, and he walked inside. Now, as soon as he was in the house, nothing looked out of place.
It actually looked very organized and clean like it normally was. But as he walked around looking for some sign of where Leela and Raymond were, all he could find was on one of the beds there were all these neat stacks of clothes that were laid out as if somebody was getting ready to pack but didn't finish packing.
And so it just seemed like something's off here. Something's not right.
This doesn't seem like they just went out and did something spontaneous. Something must have happened at the festival.
That's why they're not back yet. And so kind of in a panic, Hal ran outside and he called the police.
And after reporting Lila and Raymond missing, he actually began calling news stations and telling them, can you please put out my mom and Raymond's picture because they're older and they're missing. I need your help.
And in fact, that night, those TV stations did begin putting out all these reports about how Lila and Raymond were missing and for people to be on the lookout for them and their car. At the same time, the police immediately launched an investigation, and they quickly discovered that Lila and Raymond had never even made it to the music festival.
They never got there. And then when the police drove the route that Lila would have taken to get to the music festival, they didn't find any car accidents or anything unusual on the route that would indicate that they got into some trouble or something.
You know, they checked their phone records and Lila and Raymond had called nobody.

There was no action on their credit cards and so they hadn't bought anything. And the police would send out all these missing person reports to police officers all over the state of Texas and nobody reported seeing anything or hearing anything.
That is until three days later on July 2nd. On that night, a police officer in a little town in Arkansas, located 500 miles away from where Lila and Raymond lived, this police officer was driving down the road when he spotted an Oldsmobile that was driving with its lights off.
And so the officer pulled the car over, and he ran the license plate, and it came back as belonging to Lila and Raymond. But you got to remember that this police officer was in Arkansas, and so he had not received any updates about this missing couple.
All those TV broadcasts and all the missing person alerts that were getting sent out all over the place, those were really only happening in the state of Texas. And so this officer has no clue that Lila and Raymond are missing.
But he runs the plate, he sees it belongs to Lila and Raymond, and he goes up to the driver's side window, and he looks inside, and he sees Lila and Raymond. Lila's driving, Raymond's in the passenger seat, and they look like a really happy older couple.
And the officer would say to Lila, hey, you're driving with your lights off. And Lila would say, oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry.
You know, we were driving in Texas and we got lost and I just didn't notice. I'm really sorry.
The officer believed her and felt like these were good people who just made an honest mistake. And so he just flicked her lights on and said, I'm going to give you a warning.
No big deal. No ticket.
But be careful with your lights. You got to make sure those are on at night.
And Lila said, thank you very much. You know, of course, I'll be very careful with my lights.
And then actually, the officer gave Lila directions on how to get back to Texas from Arkansas. And then he got back in his cruiser.
And then he watched as Lila and Raymond pulled onto the main road and then disappeared into the darkness. The police officer in Arkansas who pulled them over would eventually put it together who he had pulled over, and at that point, Arkansas would get in on the search for Lila and Raymond.
But for the next two weeks, despite having both states aggressively searching for this couple, nobody could find them. That is until July 12th, so that's 10 days after Lila and Raymond got pulled over by that cop in Arkansas.
On that day, these two young boys were walking by a small stream in a town called Hot Springs, Arkansas, when they began to smell a terrible smell. They would end up telling their parents, who would come back to the stream, and they'd smell it too, and they would end up alerting the police, and the police would come out, and they would search that entire area, and they would find Lila and Raymond's Oldsmobile at the base of a 25-foot cliff, and inside the vehicle were Lila and Raymond, and they were both deceased.
It looked very much like Lila and Raymond had driven off this cliff, and they had landed down below, and that's what killed them, but when investigators went up to the top of that cliff, there were no skid marks on the cliff itself, which meant Leela, who was driving, never hit the brakes as she went over the cliff. Nobody knows why Leela and Raymond abruptly left their town and drove hundreds of miles into Arkansas instead of going to their favorite music festival, although their family members have speculated that it could be because Lila and Raymond had declining cognitive function,

and so they basically didn't know what was going on, and that's why it happened.

But this story about Lila and Raymond is what inspired a very, very famous song from the

late 1990s.

It's called The Way by Fastball, and for copyright reasons,

we can't play it for you, but I'll sing you a line and see if you can remember this song. Where were they going without ever knowing the way? Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold.
It's always summer, you'll never get cold. You'll never be hungry, where you'll never be old and gray.

Boom, there you go.

If you know this- It's always summer, you'll never get cold. You'll never be hungry, you'll never be old and gray.

Boom, there you go.

If you know the song, now you know it's got a pretty intense backstory.

Our next story is called High Stakes.

On October 20th, 1986, Captain Alexander Kluyev was piloting a passenger plane that was about to descend down into a Russian airport for a layover. On board this plane were 94 occupants, including passengers and crew.
And as the captain began going over in his mind the different steps he would need to follow to land this plane, he practically sighed with boredom. He had always thought life as a pilot would be exciting and interesting, but all he ever did were these short commercial flights around Russia, and they lacked any sort of thrill.
In fact, the captain had flown this particular route so many times, he could practically do it in his sleep. And so as the captain was about to begin yet another boring descent to end yet another boring flight, he was suddenly struck with a very unexpected idea.
And as he thought about it, he stopped what he was doing, and he just turned to his co-pilot, whose name was Gennady Zernov, and he said, hey, Gennady, can I ask you something? At the same time that Captain alexander and kennedy were having this conversation up in the cockpit down on the ground inside of that russian airport where the captain was supposed to land an air traffic controller noticed on their radar that captain alexander's plane was coming in way too fast and at too steep of an angle to attempt the landing. And so the controller radioed up to the captain and said, hey, you're going too fast.
Adjust your speed, adjust your angle. Otherwise, you're going to need to abort this landing.
But the captain did not radio anything back to the controller. Instead, the plane continued its descent at the same angle and the same speed.
And to the controller's horror, they looked out the window and literally saw the plane was lowering its landing gear like clearly they are gonna attempt to land even though this looks so dangerous and so the controller in a bit of a panic radios again up to the captain and says hey you're still coming in too fast too steep of an angle, abort the landing. But again, the captain did not respond.
What Captain Alexander had said to Gennady when he said, hey, can I ask you something, was, hey, do you want to make a bet that I can land this plane blind? And Gennady, who was also very bored, thought, you know what, that's a great idea. Let's do it.
And so the two pilots lowered all the shades inside of the cockpit, blocking all of the windows so Captain Alexander literally can't see anything except for his instruments. And then Captain Alexander attempted to land the plane.
And when the air traffic controller began calling up to Captain Alexander saying,

you're going too fast, your angle's wrong, Captain Alexander was sure he could pull it off. And so

he totally ignored the controller and went for the runway. And when he hit the runway, he was going

too fast at too steep of an angle. And so it broke off the landing gear.
The plane skidded all the way

down the runway and then flipped over and caught on fire.

Out of the 94 people who were on board that plane, 70 would perish, including the co-pilot

Gennady Zernoff. As for Captain Alexander, who orchestrated this whole tragedy,

well, he actually survived and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.
And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr.
Bolland's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years.
And we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths,

and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying.
Go follow Mr. Bolland's

Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member,

you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr.
Bolland's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Bolland's Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top's episode is called Baltic Fleet.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Russia and Japan got into a dispute over who should be in control of Korea and China. Looking to avoid an armed conflict, the Japanese sent the Russians a deal that came with reasonable concessions on both sides.
But the Russians didn't like it, they rejected the deal, and they countered with a pretty unreasonable deal that came with lots of concessions for Japan and not so many for Russia. And so Japan rejected that deal and then promptly launched a devastating

surprise attack on the Russian Navy stationed at Fort Arthur in China. This attack would officially start the one-year-long Russo-Japanese War.
The Russians knew they would need to send a replacement naval fleet up to Fort Arthur to reclaim it from the Japanese, but unfortunately, the attack at Fort Arthur had totally wiped out all of Russia's best sailors and all their best ships, putting Russia at a major disadvantage to start this war. And so as Russians are wondering what they're going to do next, the Russian Emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, authorizes an unbelievable mission.
He orders the Russian Baltic Fleet to set sail from their harbor in northern Europe and sail 18,000 miles around the world to Japan, where they will defeat the Japanese and then reclaim Fort Arthur. The fact that none of the Baltic Fleet ships were designed to sail that far of a distance, or that there were literally zero refueling points along their massive projected path, was considered largely inconsequential and ignored.
What was also considered inconsequential was how absurdly unqualified the Baltic crew was. The sailors were mostly illiterate peasants that did not grow up on the coasts, and so they showed up for military training with no seafaring skills.
And then after their military training, they still had no seafaring skills because the Baltic fleet's harbor was frozen solid almost year-round. But the Tsar believed the man he had put in charge of this crew, Admiral Rojasvensky, would make up for their deficiencies.
And this belief was not unwarranted. Admiral Rojasvensky was the best Russian officer that had not been killed in that Japan surprise attack.
He had significant combat experience, and he had a wickedly bad temper. He didn't care who you were.
If you were doing something he didn't like, he was going to beat the crap out of you. Literally.
And when he was told he was going to be in charge of this fairly inexperienced crew, he was certain his rough style would whip these Baltic boys into shape and they would be very successful. But when he laid eyes on the Baltic fleet, he realized this was going to be a little bit more challenging than he realized.
In addition to being less than satisfied with his fighting crew, he was equally dissatisfied with the two senior officers that were assigned to be his direct support. And he immediately gave them nicknames, and he would only refer to them by their nicknames, right to their face.
The first one was the Manor Sack, and the other was a vast empty space. As for the Baltic Fleet's 45 ships, they were terrible.
Because this unit never went out on the ocean because their harbor was always frozen, Russia didn't waste their good ships on them. So all they had were really old obsolete warships and then non-military ships like ferries and yachts that they just slapped random guns onto.
They also had ships that the Baltic fleet crew enthusiastically called futuristic, which were these ships that came out of Russia briefly copying French engineering, which involved these crazy top-heavy ships that sat so low in the water that their lowest rung of weapons, their cannons that poked out the windows at the bottom of the ship, they didn't work because they sat under the water permanently. But regardless of their

shortfalls, the Baltic fleet was what Rojasvensky had been dealt, and so he had to just get them

moving if they were going to win the war. And so on October 16th, 1904, Admiral Rojasvensky

ordered all of his men to take their positions in all of their ships, and they set sail. And immediately, 30 seconds into their trip, the lead ship ran aground, and another ship lost its anchor, even though it should not have been casting its anchor to begin with.
And so while one ship is trying to refloat and the other is trying to find its anchor in the ocean,

a third ship comes along and broadsides a fourth ship. And it does so much damage to this fourth ship, that ship had to go back home.
But once they overcame these initial obstacles, the Baltic fleet that now numbered 44 ships made it out of the harbor without any more issues and then set sail for the narrow waters between Denmark and Sweden. As they drew closer, Manuersak informed Rojasvensky that there might be an issue, that he had heard rumblings amongst the crew that they believed Japanese torpedo boats were stationed off the coast of Denmark waiting for them to get there.
Rojasvensky told Manuersack that that was impossible. The Japanese torpedo boats did not have the capabilities to sail 18,000 miles to Denmark.
And even if they did have the ability to do that, they could not have gotten there in such a short period of time. But Manuersak told Rojasvensky that unfortunately, even though logically that makes sense, this rumor had spread all across the crew.
And so Rojasvensky began sending out messages to all the other ships telling them there are no Japanese torpedo boats waiting for us off the coast of Denmark, everybody just needs to calm down. And these messages did appear to work at first, because eventually another rumor began to circulate, one that Rojasvensky was not really aware of as it was happening, and that was that the crew began to believe there was a huge minefield underneath them.
Everywhere they went, there was a minefield. And everybody got so worked up about it that it made its way back to a lot of the captains actually piloting the different ships.
And at some point, the pilots just began doing these evasive maneuvers. And Rojas Vensky's looking around wondering what they're doing.
And they began crashing into each other trying to avoid this minefield. When Rojas Vensky finally figured out what was going on, he sent out even more messages telling them that there's no minefield under us.
It's totally safe. Everybody just needs to calm down.
And so it took Rojasvenski going out on deck and firing shots into the air to finally get people to stop believing they were on top of a minefield. But just a couple of hours later, after Rojasvenski had gone back up to the bridge and was just looking out, surveying his fleet as they carried on towards Denmark and Sweden, when all of a sudden, towards the very front of his fleet, he heard this unbelievable barrage of cannon fire.
One of his own ships was engaging something out in front of the fleet, but Rojasvensky was too far away to see what it was, and then a message came through from the attacking ship, whose name was Kamchatka, and they said they were surrounded on all sides by at least eight Japanese torpedo boats. And so Rojaspensky runs out onto the deck looking out towards the horizon expecting to see these eight Japanese ships but he doesn't.
And then all of a sudden the shooting just completely stops and it's silent. And then Rojaspensky notices on his right side a small little fishing boat is making its way right up alongside his.
It would turn out Kamchatka, the attacking ship, had confused this little unarmed Russian fishing ship with eight Japanese torpedo boats and had opened fire. But luckily, even though they fired hundreds and hundreds of rounds at this little boat, none of them hit the boat.
And so the fishermen were fine. And the fishermen had actually been sent to the boat, specifically by Tsar Nicholas II, to tell Rojasvensky that he had been promoted.
And so Rojasvensky apologizes to the fishermen for having shot at them hundreds and hundreds of times, and they said it was okay, and the fishermen carried on. After Rojespensky chewed out the crew of the Kamchatka, the rest of the Baltic fleet gathered up, and they continued towards the narrow waters between Denmark and Sweden.
When they got close, a Danish resupply ship came out to meet them to give them fuel and food and water, and the Baltic fleet mistook them for a Japanese torpedo boat, causing them to ram them repeatedly. And then they realized their mistake, but at that point they had done severe damage to the resupply ship, who had to immediately turn around and go back to shore.
After that, the Baltic fleet did manage to get past Denmark and Sweden, and they made it out to the North Sea. But as soon as they got out there, there was trouble.
One of the captains of the ships that was towards the front of the Baltic fleet's formation spotted four Japanese torpedo boats coming right at them. And so this ship, along with six others, immediately just began engaging these four ships with everything they had.
Cannons, big guns, small guns, everything. It was absolute chaos from the front of this formation, and the amount of gunfire that was going off towards the front caused the rest of the ships that were not part of the attack to begin to panic, and the other ship captains began ramming into each other to try to get away from this attack.
And so while that's going on, all the crew members on all the ships begin drawing their swords and running around expecting the Japanese to board them at any moment. And the others that did not draw their swords put on life jackets and laid down on their back on the deck of the ship, believing that was procedure for how to survive a sinking ship.
And so for the next 20 minutes, it was just continuous gunfire coming from the front of their formation. One of the attacking ships sent a message back to Rojasvensky that said they had been hit by a torpedo and they were taking heavy fire and it was just absolute bedlam up there.
And then all of a sudden it just totally stopped. And when the smoke cleared, Rojasvensky and his ship had been able to maneuver up a little bit closer and they could see what they were shooting at.
And it would turn out, once again, it was a case of mistaken identity. They were not being attacked by Japanese torpedo boats.
They had spotted four small British fishing boats. And in the chaos of the gunfight, the Baltic fleet had inadvertently begun to fire at each other, killing several crew members and badly damaging their ships in the process.
As for the British fishermen, only one of their boats actually sunk, despite the fact that the Baltic fleet had fired thousands and thousands of rounds at them, and they had been stationary the entire time. The Russian Tsar immediately apologized to Britain, but the British media went crazy and the British people called for war, believing that this type of attack could not possibly be an accident.
But Russian diplomats leveled with the British and said, no, this really was an accident. And eventually they convinced them, avoiding starting yet another war.
Rozhysvansky and his Baltic fleet were allowed to continue in their journey, and after a couple of weeks, they were getting close to Africa, when one of his ships, the Kamchatka, the same ship that believed they were surrounded by eight Japanese torpedo boats, they got separated from the main fleet and got lost. And so Rojasvensky and the other officers did what they could to try to locate them, but nobody had seen where they went, and there wasn't great technology to try to locate them, and so unfortunately, Rojasvensky and the Baltic fleet just had to continue on and hope that at some point the lost ship would find them again.
A few days later, the main body arrived in Tangier, and lo and behold, Kamchatka showed up, and they informed Rojasvensky that they had gotten lost, and they didn't really have a good answer for that. But once they were lost, they managed to engage three separate Japanese torpedo boats.
But it would turn out they were not Japanese torpedo boats. They were in fact a German, a Swedish, and a French fishing boat.
But none of Kamchatka's rounds actually impacted any of the three vessels, and so three more wars were averted. And so now that Rojespensky had his lost ship back, he gathered up his full Baltic fleet, and they left Tangier.
But on their way out, one of the ships managed to cut the underwater telegraph line to Tangier, cutting off Tangier's communication with Europe for the next four days. By now, the Baltic fleet was very low on coal, but they had a planned rendezvous with a German resupply ship off the coast of West Africa.
When they got there, the crew decided they didn't want to do another resupply later on, and so let's just take double coal this time. And so they hauled all this extra coal onto their ships, despite not having a place for it, and so naturally they began throwing it in the halls and in their bedrooms and basically anywhere there was space.
And what that did is it led to a fine layer of coal dust all over everything in the ship, and that combined with the intense humidity off the coast of Africa led to this black coal gunk getting trapped inside of all of the sailors lungs, which began killing several of them. A couple weeks later, as they rounded

the southern tip of Africa, it finally rained on them, washing away a lot of that cold dust on their ships, which was a big relief. But the rain turned into a pretty bad storm, and so Rojasvensky decided he just wanted all of his ships to call in and say they were okay.
And so one by one, each of the ships were told to message him saying the words, we are okay. And so one by one, each of the ships did this until it got to Kamchatka's turn.
And they accidentally sent the message, do you see Japanese torpedo boats? And of course, this message spread like wildfire across the entire crew, which led to mass hysteria. And Rose Jaspensky's trying to send out messages to say, no, there's no Japanese torpedo boats, but it's too late, the other captains are panicking, and they're ramming into each other and firing blindly into the wind.
From that point forward, every night, Rose Jaspensky would go up onto the bow of his ship, and he would scream obscenities at Kamchatka. When the Baltic fleet finally made it to Madagascar, the morale amongst the crew was very low.
And so when they docked in Madagascar, the crew decided it would be a good idea to boost their morale by buying some pets to bring back on board the ship with them. And the pets they decided to bring back were crocodiles and poisonous snakes.
When their handlers smuggled them back on board their ship,

they eventually... them.
And the pets they decided to bring back were crocodiles and poisonous snakes. When their handlers smuggled them back on board their ship, they immediately escaped down into the bowels of the ship.
When they went looking for them, they couldn't find them because the ships were in such bad shape, there were all sorts of cracks and holes all over the interior for these animals to escape to. And so the men just had to accept there were very dangerous predators just living on their ship with them.
And so most men were unable to sleep at night in fear of being attacked by these animals, which led a number of them to go for real insane. And so the Pets idea didn't really boost morale amongst the Baltic fleet, and so one of the officers decided he would take another crack at boosting spirits.
And so he went to a vendor in Madagascar, and he purchased 2,000 of their finest cigarettes to bring back on board. So he brings them back on board, he hands them all out, and everyone's so thankful.
But it turns out those cigarettes were laced with enormous amounts of opium, which led to hundreds of the crew members becoming hopelessly addicted to opium. Also in Madagascar, the sailors picked up dozens of diseases that began wiping them out in droves.
During one funeral for a crew member, the Kamchatka asked if they could fire a salute with blank rounds. They were given permission, but they accidentally fired live rounds into the ship right next to them.
When Rojasvensky and the rest of the Baltic fleet finally left Madagascar, their only refrigerator on board one of their ships broke, which spoiled all of their meat, tons and tons of meat. And so they began throwing it overboard, which attracted hundreds and hundreds of sharks, which circled their ships for the rest of their journey.
Rojasvensky desperately wanted to find a way to somehow train the remainder of the Baltic fleet how to be somewhat militarily competent. And so he decided he would make them all do target practice because that had been a big issue on this trip so far.
And so we had one ship attach a long line that was connected to a target in the water, and that ship would pull the target along, and the other ships would take shots at the target. And so all of the ships on Rojas Vensky's call began firing at this target, and after thousands and thousands of rounds, they didn't hit the target once.
However, they managed to continuously shoot the ship that was pulling the target.

For Rojespensky, this was the final straw.

He felt like he could do absolutely nothing to make the Baltic fleet an actual military force.

And so he sent a message back to the Tsar and said,

you got to replace me. I need to resign and somebody else needs to come in and take over.
And the Tsar said, no, this is your fleet. And so begrudgingly, Rojasvensky continued on leading the Baltic fleet until they finally, after seven total months on the sea, were within striking distance of their target in Japan.
The night before, as they prepared for their attack, they went into stealth mode, where all the ships killed all of their lights. So they're totally dark, with the exception of their hospital ship.
That kept their lights on. This was considered a rule of war at the time, which both sides abided by.
And so while the Baltic fleet was sitting out in the waters outside of Japan, a small fishing boat began coming towards them. Now, the fishing boat could only see the lit up hospital ship.
They could not see the 43 other darkened ships. And so a crew member on board this hospital ship came up to the railing and he recognized the fishing boat was actually a Russian fishing boat.
And so he waved them down. And when the Russian fishermen came outside, the crew member told him, you got to stop because there's 43 ships behind me that have their lights off.
Do not go this way. Go around.
And so the Russian fisherman thanked him and turned around and went on his merry way. Except that wasn't a Russian fisherman.
It was a Japanese sailor on board a Japanese torpedo boat. And now they knew exactly where the Baltic fleet was.
And so that night, the Japanese Navy completely surrounded the Baltic fleet.

And then the next day at daybreak, they launched their attack.

It was called the Battle of Tsushima and it was obscenely lopsided.

The Japanese Navy completely wiped out the Baltic fleet,

killing 4,000 of their crew members and capturing 7,300 others,

which included Rojespensky, who had been badly wounded in the battle, but he would survive.

In contrast, the Japanese only had 100 casualties.

This victory for Japan really marked the end of the war for Russia,

and shortly after the Battle of Tsushima, the Russians agreed to surrender. check out all of our studios podcasts not just this one but also mr ballin's medical mysteries

bedtime stories wartime stories and run full just search for ballin studios on any podcast platform

and you'll find all of them if you want to watch hundreds more strange dark and mysterious stories

just head over to our youtube channel which is just called mr ballin so that's gonna do it i

really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.
Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early

and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today.

And before you go, please tell us about yourself

by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.